Designing a resilient and sustainable closed-loop supply chain network in copper industry

Due to industrialization, copper demand has increased over the last decades. Recycling rate of copper is high and its scrap requires less energy than primary production, so sustainable closed-loop supply chain network design is considered a primary decision. Besides, the uneven distribution of copper has exaggerated the destructive effects of natural disasters such as earthquakes on mines. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is no research about copper supply chain network design. In this paper, a copper network is designed and backup suppliers are used as a resilience strategy to reduce the effects of earthquakes on mining operations. Without backup model and with backup model are presented as multi-objective and are compared with each other. In each model, the economic objective is to maximize the supply chain profit; the environmental objective is to minimize water consumption and air pollutants; and the social objective is to maximize social desirability by considering security and unemployment rates. The models are formulated using mixed-integer linear programming and they are solved by ε -constraint and weighted sum methods. Results show that, with backup model increases the supply chain responsiveness. Also, the model is able to improve the economic and social performances of the supply chain. But in environmental aspect, it performs worse than without backup model. This is because the backup suppliers are added to the supply chain and their exploitation will create negative environmental effects. In addition, using copper scraps saves costs, energy and the consumption of this non-renewable metal. Graphical Abstract